Mattison

How many of us have sat down with a good friend, a good bottle of wine or a good cup of coffee and found ourselves in a lively discussion about the latest book we’re reading? Literature can be a tremendous influence in readers’ lives, and often lasting friendships are begun with a common interest in an extraordinary book.

Such is the premise of the Sunday Book Club’s May selection, “The Book Borrower” by Alice Mattison.

Mattison’s novel is cleverly crafted as a story-within-a-story about two young mothers whose long friendship begins with one lending the other a favorite book. Readers follow the story of the two mothers, Deborah Laidlaw and Toby Ruben, while at the same time following the progress of the book as Ruben reads it.

The book Deborah gives Toby (who goes by Ruben) is called “The Trolley Girl,” and it too follows the lives of two women, sisters Jessie and Miriam, who live in their Massachusetts town of Boynton during the violent trolley strike of 1921.

Mattison’s rather abrupt switches between the two storylines are at first a little jarring. Shifting gears in such a manner takes some getting used to, but this quickly passed and I became fascinated with the similar themes and personalities and the way the writer weaves it all together.

She could have also easily made the mistake of letting the voices of the two main characters, Ruben and Miriam, blend into the same character speaking in two different storylines. But it is an enormous credit to the author that Ruben and Miriam emerge as two distinct personalities, two independent and well-developed characters.

Mattison has an ear for good prose and a fine eye for detail, too. Her passages describing Deborah and Ruben’s quirky friendship and relationship with their children are particularly well-written:

Deborah stood behind her as she ate at her kitchen table, and Squirrel lay back in his white slanting plastic chair and roundly looked at them from the middle of the table. Rose and Jill played with pieces of sandwich and talked to slimy babies that were apple slices, dancing them up and down. Deborah kissed Ruben’s scalp and ate a bite of Ruben’s remaining half sandwich. Ruben did not turn around. She could feel Deborah’s pregnant belly against her head, warm and firm. The window faced south and the winter sun came in behind her and around them both, through a stained-glass yin-yang sign in green and blue, coloring a white macramé hanging she’d tacked above the table. She felt sun on her arms. Rose climbed into Ruben’s lap and jumped apple slices over Ruben’s arm. Were Ruben and Deborah becoming each other? Toby Ruben hugged Rose and noticed the grain of her own oak table, which lay in such a delicate curve that she had to trace it with her forefinger. Something else beautiful: Rose’s ear in the sunlight.

The main story follows Deborah and Ruben through the years as they raise their children and endlessly debate politics, motherhood and women’s roles. Eventually the friendship unravels, but Mattison neatly (some may say too neatly, but we’ll save that for the Book Talk) wraps up the threads of the two stories at the end.

Critics have widely praised “The Book Borrower,” which was released in 2000. Publishers Weekly noted that “Mattison constructs her layered plot with the skill of a gem-setter.” Indeed, this “gem” should make an interesting chapter in the Sunday Book Club’s series on the power of literature.

To contact Regina C. Davis, use e-mail or call 348-7936.